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  1. #1
    wolfism Guest

    Arrow Inchcoonans Brickworks, Tayside – May/ June ‘09

    The demise of the Errol Brick Company is a parable for modern times. It was one of Scotland’s remaining handful of independent brick makers, but when the slump hit the construction industry, times grew hard, and the brickworks was mothballed. There was no coverage in the papers after that, and as I picked my way across the fields a few weeks later, I wondered whether I would find any activity on site. Modern brick kilns usually run 24 hours a day in order to use energy efficiently: but I quickly saw that the lights were off, the machinery was at a standstill, and the roller shutters were down. The fire in the heart of the kilns was out.


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    The sun was already striking the kiln sheds by the time I squeezed inside: and the scene I found there stopped me in my tracks. It was like Fletchers all over again. This was a totally complete brickworks, as if preserved in aspic, sitting waiting to be turned on again. The light was ideal for photography: the far recesses were in deep shadow, but the kilns were lit up by a fiery glow of sunlight. As I went deeper into the complex, I found it was deceptively large: the tunnel kiln was over 100 metres long, and I climbed on top of it, in amongst the brick dust and metal ducts, to survey the mass of machinery around it. In fact, Inchcoonans was a relatively up-to-date brickworks, and had been modernised in the 1980’s – both the tunnel kiln and shuttle kiln were state-of-the-art, fired by gas and controlled by banks of computerised control gear. By the time I left Inchcoonans several hours later, I had a large set of photos and a head full of questions about the operation of the machinery.


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    This site was worked from the 1870’s as a tileworks by the Pitfour Patent Brick and Tile Co. – it was owned from 1910 by the same firm (A. Fraser Ltd.) that owned the Anniston Brickworks in Angus – and eventually shut in 1990. It was reopened in 1994 by an independent firm, Errol Brick, run by Martin Dighton and Andrew Clegg, but had to be mothballed in March 2008 during the current downturn in the construction industry. 27 staff were made redundant. The brickfields were the oldest active fields in Britain – working a shallow pit of alluvial clay in Bevershire, on the north bank of the River Tay. In fact, Andrew Clegg proved that brickmaking was introduced into Britain on Tayside by the Romans, who produced bricks for their army’s thermal baths at Inchtuthill in the 1st Century AD, then clamp-fired them to produce thousands of 50mm lozenges. Handmade bricks from the carse were supplied to build the Old Bell Mill at Stanley in 1785 – the oldest formal contract fulfilled by the brickworks, although bricks and tiles had been produced at the site since 1690, or before. For years, the handmade bricks made at the site from unmilled clay were colloquially known as “piggery bricks”.


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    The clay was once dug out by hand, later a narrow gauge railway was used to move it, then latterly the brickmakers used a Cat D6 bulldozer, plus a tractor and bogie. Once dug from the brickfield, the clay was stockpiled during the summer, then “grogged” with sand – the mixture was milled to a particle size of 2mm, then extruded and chopped into perforated and wirecut bricks or tiles. The chocolate-coloured “green” bricks are then moved into the drying chambers, then once dried, they’re moved onto the steel rail cars which carry them into the kiln. The natural gas-fired kilns are brought up to temperature over a period of 72 hours, reaching 1050deg.C: the continuous tunnel kiln normally runs for 24 hours per day. The brickworks has one rectangular downdraught kiln, now out of use, and two circular “beehive” kilns (long out of use), with one converted into an exhibition space. The active parts were one modern shuttle kiln, and one modern tunnel kiln, using metal cars running on rails with a deck made of refractory blocks like giant firebricks.


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    Latterly, Errol Brick had a capacity of 10 million extruded bricks each year and uniquely rather than fireclay or mudstone blaes, Inchcoonans brickworks used alluvial clay. Technically known as late Devensian marine clay, it had some unique properties. As a result of oxidisation in the kiln, the fired bricks turn from brown to an orange-red colour – facing bricks, floor tiles and engineering bricks were amongst the thirty types of brick manufactured here: but the mainstay were the frostproof “terracotta” bricks which were used at Stirling Castle, the Museum of Scotland, the Palace of Holyrood and many other historic sites – the brickworks latterly concentrated on bricks for conservation and restoration projects. Puddle clay dug straight from the banks of the River Tay was also sold, and used for lining lochs and canals, and capping landfills.


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    I returned to the brickworks a few weeks after my first visit, taking some more photos and peering at the machinery in more relaxed fashion – but the sad part came in May when I drove past again and noticed that the buildings were shrinking. Having taken the original news report in the papers at face value, I believed that the brickworks had merely been mothballed, and that the fire in the kilns would be re-kindled when business picked up. It turned out this assumption was wrong: demolition was well underway. Most of the machinery that I’d gazed at during previous visits – the pan mill, screens, extruder and so forth – was a pile of scrap iron. The moral is – where once a company might have shut down a factory for the duration of a downturn – now the banks foreclose and it has no chance to recover. No wonder this country's economy is f*cked. I was saddened to see the place flattened, because Errol Brick was one of the Carse of Gowrie’s bigger employers, and its closure was another nail in the coffin for efforts to buy building materials made locally. By all accounts, Errol Brick’s owners were enthusiasts: men who were evangelists for brick as a sustainable building material. This makes the closure harder to take than a case where Global Megacorp shuts down a factory which was run by beancounters.


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    The tragic thing is that Errol Brick had recently developed an unfired clay brick called the ECO brick which was totally recyclable. “Errol Brick Company Limited's Eco brick has been designed to be a fully recyclable earth brick and mortar system, it is the only product manufactured in commercial form in the UK. The size is a nominal 225mm x 110 x 68 and is designed to fit in-between wall studding as a non load-bearing component. It offers the builder the ability to build a breathable wall system which balances humidity. The walls should be finished with a clay plaster. Materials for the brick:- Post glacial alluvial clay, Sand, Sawdust. All the above are from local sources.” But not even investment in “green” products was enough to save the brickworks.


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    Today Inchcoonans is the proverbial heap of rubble – demolition moved swiftly and only the old beehive kiln remains. It has no doubt been preserved so that a housebuilder can point to it as “heritage”, and a tokenistic justification for calling the new estate which will probably spring up here “The Old Brickworks”. That will mean little to the folk who buy the over-priced people boxes, but I won’t forget that magical morning when I explored an intact brickworks as it glowed in the sunlight.

  2. #2
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    Default Re: Inchcoonans Brickworks, Tayside – May/ June ‘09

    Went last night with RichardB. It was bloody horrible, dark and pissing down, but the place is still there at least. Only just.







    Little table set up. One big brown 'analysis' jar, a pot of Creatine and a few quid's worth of empties of Red Cola.

  3. #3
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    Default Re: Inchcoonans Brickworks, Tayside – May/ June ‘09

    Yes, it was all pretty sparse. There were still a couple of little bits surviving - some machinery, winches and pulleys and at least the chimneys and 'igloos' are still standing. There were various diggers on site though so it won't be long.





    Inside one of the kilns.

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